MIAMI – When things go right, the powerful and the famous get credit. When things go wrong, the powerful and the famous get off. Others, less well-known, get scapegoated.
Sad that what happens too often in the real world also seeps into sports. Especially that grandest of sporting holidays, Super Bowl Sunday.
Ask anybody to come up with a list of Super goats and you’ll hear the usual names: Craig Morton, Jackie Smith, Fred Swearingen, Neil O’Donnell, Scott Norwood. You won’t hear Tom Landry, Roger Staubach or Andre Reed.
Similarly, glamorous players such as Staubach, Len Dawson, Marcus Allen and Tom Brady own Super Bowl MVP awards for days on which they were supporting players to lesser known teammates.
In the cases of Allen and Brady, their teams’ defenses shut down record-setting offenses to make the win possible. Allen’s 74-yard, this-way-and-that gallop came at the end of the third quarter and the Raiders leading Washington 28-9. Brady’s first Super Bowl MVP, on a day Ty Law outscored the Rams receivers he covered, shows why fans shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
More key than Staubach, 12 of 19 for 119 yards, to Dallas’ 24-3 romp against Miami in Super Bowl VI were the Cowboys’ 252 yards rushing and two turnovers garnered by linebacker Chuck Howley. Dawson was honored two years earlier for a similarly pedestrian day during which the Kansas City defense forced five Minnesota turnovers.
Finding blame
The goat gets so tabbed for failing in one of a game’s last or most easily identified pressure situations. But what about those whose earlier failures set the table? Let’s look at the two most famous Super goats.
Norwood has said after his missed 47-yarder in Super Bowl XXV left Buffalo one short of the Giants, 20-19, both Reed and Darryl Talley consoled him by pointing to their own errors earlier in the game.
In the second quarter, Buffalo was up 10-3 with the ball at midfield, momentum from a touchdown on its previous possession and seven-to-10 points from forcing the ground-bound Giants out of their power running game.
Reed dropped a third-and-1 pass over the middle to kill one drive. A safety after the punt pushed the lead to 12-3. Two possessions later, on third-and-7 from the New York 44, Reed ran a 5-yard crossing pattern, then couldn’t get the extra 2 yards. He remembered that.
What Talley remembered were two third-and-longs in the 75-yard, 9:29 drive that put the Giants up 17-12. On each play, a third-and-8 and a third-and-11, the Pro Bowl linebacker blew a tackle that would have snuffed the Giants’ thrust.
When it comes to NFL innovation, Landry ranks up there with Paul Brown. No Scandinavian-designed furniture displayed more modernized genius that a Landry-designed defense or offense. Under Landry, Dallas played in five Super Bowls in a nine-year span.
But Taciturn Tom and his staff had a tendency for some brow-furrowing calls for which they were never excoriated. Smith’s dropped touchdown pass and Swearingen’s controversial (OK, incredibly weak) pass interference call on Dallas’ Benny Barnes got the Cowboys coaches off the hook for Super Bowl XIII, the 35-31 loss to Pittsburgh.
Dallas took the kickoff and moved 38 yards on three runs by a flying Tony Dorsett. Then, Landry succumbed to his lone vice, the early Super Bowl gadget play. When Drew Pearson fumbled a double reverse halfway to Homestead, Pittsburgh recovered. Seven plays later, 7-0 Steelers.
Strange plan
Landry nearly mothballed Dorsett until the second half, stunning everyone paying attention, including Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown. Brown used this in his 1989 autobiography as an example of when to junk the game plan for a hot running back.
Dorsett was rediscovered for the drive that ended with Smith’s drop and a Dallas field goal. Yeah, Smith should’ve caught the pass, but Staubach has said he threw it too low and too softly.
Three drives later, Pittsburgh took a 28-17 lead after Swearingen’s call gave them 33 yards and a first down. That’s when a game-long coaching staff goof hurt Dallas as surely as Smith’s drop.
The unintentionally squibbed kickoff went right to Cowboys All-Pro defensive tackle Randy White. Encased in a cudgel-like cast was White’s broken left thumb. Keeping a broken-thumbed lineman in the middle of the kickoff return team is sleeping with a lit Marlboro. You will get burned.
White fumbled while trying to switch the ball to his good hand. Pittsburgh recovered on the Dallas 18. The next play, Terry Bradshaw hit Lynn Swann to give Pittsburgh a 35-17 lead with 6:51 left. Ball game.
Goating someone in a team sport such as football shortens discussion for fans and media. But players and coaches know. When one guy gets so much blame, he’s defining “taking one for the team.”
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